Haunted But No Longer Hunted
by JustThisOne
Summary: When Eric asks to interrogate a boy who is a person of interest in the death of a Naval officer, no one can imagine what secrets will be revealed. A bit a a departure from previous fanfics. Please R&R.


Callen leaned back in his chair in the interrogation room of the boatshed, sighing in defeat. He was the last of the team to try and get something- anything from the eleven- year old boy sitting at the other side of the table, drilling holes in the cold aluminum tabletop with his eyes.

Felix Rotez was just a kid. But he had run from Deeks and Kensi when they stopped by his house to ask him and his single mom questions about their now-deceased next door neighbor. The neighbor was retired Naval intelligence, Lieutenant Calvin Krebb, who was found dead in the street, run over by at least two cars. Due to the damage, the medical officer in charge of his remains either could not or would not give an exact cause of death. Thus, NCIS had been called in to investigate the man's death and to see if he had met an untimely end accidentally or on purpose.

It had been a routine case, until the kid. He was alone most of the time, his mom had said, clearly anxious to get to the next shift in an ever-expanding and changing set of part time jobs she held to make the bills. There was no dad and the mom was so distracted, she agreed to let Deeks and Kensi take Felix for questioning without her presence. Just bring him back and leave a note saying what trouble he got into, she said.

Now Sam, Callen, Kensi, and Deeks were sitting at the table in the common area, wondering what to do next. The boy was the only person who would not talk at all about Krebb. Everybody loved the man, never heard of him doing anything bad or out of the ordinary. Volunteered at schools and recreation programs. Pillar of the community. So why wouldn't the kid say anything? What did he know? The agents were stuck; left to debate their next play.

In the ops center of the OSP mission, Nell and Eric were going over the details of the case, hunting for 'bacon' as Nell called it. The linchpin that would make the pieces fall together. She was mining through the old and mostly redacted intelligence reports and audits she had access to and Eric was looking through the electronic contacts and tracks left by their victim. Watching the interrogation footage from time to time, seeing the agents try to connect with their young witness Felix, something caught Eric's eye. After staring at the screen for a moment to make sure his hunch, which had been slowly building the more he looked into the life of the Rotez family and the officer, was true.

"Eric? Do you have something?" Nell asked when she glanced over and saw the same blank expression on her partner's face that had been there five minutes before.

Eric jumped in his wheelie chair, clearly caught off guard by his friend's question. "I…Nope, nothing new. Uhh…I need to go talk to Hetty."

Nell just gave a small "Okay" as Eric spun towards the door of the computer cave and went to locate his boss, so nervous for what he was about to ask of her that he could feel his stomach clench.

"Let me try talking to Felix, Hetty. I think he might talk to me." Eric said as he perched himself on the edge of one of Hetty's rattan office chairs. Hetty considered her technical operator for a moment, churning his question over in her mind. The only thing she could think of was _Why the heck does Eric want to try interrogation? _

"Why do you think that? Do you know something I don't know?"

"Doubt it. Can you just trust me on this? Let me try? If it doesn't work you can do what you want with me. Please."

"Alright Mr. Beale, I will indulge you. Once. And I'm driving. I need to speak with the team anyway; I might as well see your debut in person."

Eric just nodded and followed his boss out to her car, silently hoping she would not kill him if he failed…or fire him if he was right about Felix.

On the way to the boatshed, Hetty had called the team to make sure none of them would try speaking to the child again, that Mr. Beale was going to have a go at him. Needless to say, the team, especially the lead agent, was guffawing at this when Hetty and Eric showed up.

"Seriously, Eric, you aren't trained for this. Just tell us what you know and let us take over." Callen said as Hetty and Eric entered the boatshed.

"Can you just trust me on this? I think Felix and I have something in common that he won't be able to talk to any of you about."

Sam, Deeks, and Kensi looked at each other and then to Hetty, looking for some insight.

The older woman just shook her head and turned to Eric, "Do not make me regret this, Mr. Beale."

Eric just nodded, looking even more nervous than he had in her office. He reached to take the case file from Sam and found the SEAL would not let the folder out of his grasp. "Seriously? Sam I need this for something." Sam released the folder, not answering the tech as he walked down the short hallway to the interrogation room that held Felix. The agents and Hetty all turned to watch on the video linked to the TV in the main room.

…...

"Hey Felix, my name is Eric and I'm not a cop. I'm the computer geek. I think I know why you aren't talking."

This caused the boy to look up for the first time. "You don't know anything."

Eric just nodded, having expected this. "Maybe not. But can I tell you what I think?" Hearing no reply, Eric took a deep breath and continued. "I think you are scared because the guy, Calvin, who lived next door to you, the one who was in the Navy that we talked to your mom about, was not very nice to you. I think you are scared because he told you that if you said anything about what he did to you when you were alone with him that he would hurt you or your mom or that nobody would believe you. So I wanted to show you some pictures. So you would know that he's dead, that he can't do what he did to you anymore."

As he was talking, Eric pulled out the photos from the crime scene and laid them on the table.

"Are you sure he's dead?" Felix asked in a whisper.

"Yeah. The people who came to your house and the other people who talked to you here all saw him. He's really dead."

The agents in the other room all had their mouth agape, wondering if they were really hearing what had just happened in the room. The boy had been sexually abused by Krebb…and Eric? As if on cue, they each looked to Hetty, the woman who had all the answers, and found her leaning on the table for support, one hand covering her mouth, the other covering her heart.

"How did you know?" The boy managed to ask Eric, still stealing glances at the photos on the table, like he was making sure his tormentor was dead before carrying on.

"I can't tell just by looking at you, so don't worry about that. One of my dad's friends did to me what Calvin did to you. Hurt me in the same way. I guess I saw me when I was looking at you in the footage and then in suddenly made sense when you though Sam- the big guy- was mad at you for being so quiet and you flinched. I know your neighbor probably told you otherwise, but you didn't do anything wrong. I know you feel embarrassed and ashamed, but you did not do anything wrong. He did."

"I was so scared of him. I didn't want to do it I told him I didn't want him to. But he said if I didn't he would make my mom do it instead and I didn't want him to hurt her like he hurt me so I let him. I _let_ him."

"No. You didn't let him; he made you. I know you don't believe me and that's fine. I get it. It takes time to understand what he did and why. But it wasn't right what he did to you. Can you tell me when he first started?"

Felix was in tears when he muttered, "Kindergarten." Six years.

"What about you?", he asked Eric suddenly.

"It started when I was eight and stopped when I was about ten."

"How did you make him stop?"

Eric was starting to struggle at this point, trying to keep his composure, remembering when he finally realized what had happed to him, the extend of the psychological damage that had been done to him in tandem with the physical hell, during a sociology class freshman year of college. He had never told a soul until he managed to go to the counseling center at his university and ask for help after two months of wondering if he could ever be fixed.

"I didn't make it stop. I couldn't and neither could you. I only stopped when he had to move away for his job. He died from a heart attack in the new city"

"Did he say he would hurt your mom too?"

"No. He uhh…grown-ups who do this are really good at being mean. They say different things to make you do stuff you don't want to do. It makes them feel special and in charge. The person who was mean to me was a friend of my dad. He knew my dad didn't really like me as much as my older brothers so he told me that even if I told my dad what was happening, they would still be friends. That he would never go away since my dad wanted to be friends with him more than he wanted to be friends with me. He knew I was closest to my mom, like how you are with your mom. So he told me that she would not want to be friends with me if I told her what he did to me because he would tell her what he made me do to him and that she wouldn't want to be friends with a person who would do that. I believed him because, at the time, it made sense at seemed like it would really happen if I told."

Felix was still in tears feeling the emotional release of finally being able to talk to somebody who understood. Somebody who could answer his questions.

"I don't like talking about it. It…"

"Yeah I know. It hurts like hell. But the thing is, once you start to talk about it to a person who can help you understand what happened, you learn to deal with it. It stops running your life."

In a voice so small the five gathered in the other room could barely hear, Felix asked, "Am I ruined? I feel like I'm invisible but everybody is looking at me. Please, just be real with me and tell me if I'm ruined."

Eric was obviously near the end of his rope in the room which was closing in on him by the minute. But he knew he was the only person right now that Felix could ask who would understand. After all, Eric had asked himself that question more times than he could count. Still asked it of himself when, every so often, he caught a bad day and the nightmares were so bad he would wake up shaking and have to run to the bathroom to vomit.

"No. You are not ruined. You are a tough, brave, awesome kid who did not deserve or want for Calvin Krebb to hurt you. If you get help, it gets better. I promise you that. There may still be stuff you do that nobody else does, but everybody has something like that from childhood. Like Sam hates clowns and Callen folds all of his Tootsie Pop wrappers into animals. Like, me, I get really nervous around people, even people that I know well. I am really awkward with people…but then again, I do have two older brothers so that could be why." Both allowed themselves a smile. "You learn to manage it, is what I'm saying. Like when I feel really nervous or uncomfortable or whatever, I count off the numbers in the Fibonacci sequence. Or I go to the beach."

Felix looked down again at the crime scene photos of Calvin Krebb. Touching one softly, he said, "I did this to him."

"I know."

In tears again, Felix stuttered, "We were walking down the street and he was talking about how he was going to ask my mom if he could take me camping. Just the two of us. Then he said how it would be so nice to spend time with me without having to worry about interruptions. I panicked. I thought it couldn't get any worse with…him but he made a point to be quick, in case my mom came home on break to check on me. If we were alone camping then there…there wouldn't be anybody to walk in. When he said he wanted to take more time with me, I- I- don't know what I was thinking. I saw him and the street and I just wanted to get away so—I shoved him. I didn't know he was hit by a car until I saw-! I ran. After I pushed him. I didn't want to kill him I just wanted it to stop. Oh my God, am I going to go to jail?!"

"Look Felix, I need to have one of the agents talk to you about this but I don't think you will go to jail or get into trouble, okay?"

He nodded. "Okay. Can I be alone for a little bit now?"

"Sure."

As he got up and walked to the door, Eric was barely holding off the tears. He had told all of the things he had told Felix to other adults who had the same experience he had. They had a de- facto support group, a safe place to be with people who understood. Talking to a kid was too close, though. By the time Eric opened the door, he was doing the deep breathing exercise his former therapist had taught him and was running through the Fibonacci sequence so fast he couldn't tell the numbers apart. He was trying to lock it down emotionally before the team saw him. He was terrified of the reaction; he always was.

Knowing it would be no better to wait for the inevitable, Eric headed down the short hallway to the room where the agents and his boss had been watching, clutching the case file as if his life depended on it. Hearing him coming, the agents tried, with limited success, to mask their expressions and pretend, for Eric's sake that the emotional bombshell they had just witnessed was just another day at the office.

Eric returned the file to Sam, saying "Thanks" without making eye contact. Kensi reached out and briefly touched Eric's arm, and he gave a small smile in return, acknowledging her gesture, knowing that in the situation they had been thrust into, silence felt better than stumbling words. As Eric moved to Hetty, who had been watching him with her trademark intensity, he paused, not wanted to ask the questions he knew he had to know the answers to.

"Is he going to be arrested?" he struggled to ask.

"No. No, Mr. Beale I do not think that would be in the best interest of anyone. We will turn our findings over to the LAPD and they can follow up to determine if Krebb had any more victims. Thank you. For what you did for Felix.", she finished softly, more like a mother to a son than boss to an employee.

Eric made the smallest of nods before blurting out his final pressing question, knowing he had to hear the answer, whatever it may be, before escaping the crushing vibes in the boatshed. "Are you going to fire me? I never disclosed any of…that… to NCIS and I know it isn't in my file since Nate's never brought it up. I know I was probably supposed to disclose it but people, people look at you differently. When they know." he finished desperately and the team could hear the near panic in his voice, recognizing it from their coms when he was alerting them to danger in the field.

"Eric. You are most definitely not fired and I will not hear of you ever losing your position with NCIS because of what happened to you. You were not at fault any more than Felix was."

Eric gave an audible sigh of relief. Callen said, "Nobody's looking at you any differently here. Nothing's changed." The team all nodded in agreement and chimed in with "true, man", "exactly", and the like. Eric gave a genuine smile which faded slightly when Deeks asked, "So, what is his mom in for here? Your parents obviously got you help, do you think his mom will do the same?"

Eric fidgeted for a moment and admitted, "I never told my parents. If they know anything about it, they have never said anything. Maybe they know and don't want to admit it, I don't know. I went to counseling my freshman year of college when I just felt so _messed up_ that I couldn't take it anymore." Turning to Hetty again, Eric asked, "Is it okay if I take the long way back to Ops?"

Hardly waiting for the nod she gave, Eric swiftly moved to the door. Once outside, he doubled over and took several deeps breaths, slowly releasing the air as he worked to calm himself down, knowing that he had to in order to not only go back to the Ops center but sleep that night. He made it to the beach, kicking off his shoes and digging his toes in the sand to be more a part of the ocean's edge. Closing his eyes and bringing his knees up to his chest, he wrapped his arms around his lower legs and timed his breathing with the sound of the Pacific as it rushed to and from the shoreline in the universal sound of the ocean.

As he listened to the healingly hypnotic sound of the waves coming ashore, Eric went through his familiar routine of reviewing all he knew about the abuse he survived, the habits of abusers, and all the things he now knew about what happened to him, realized only thanks to countless painfully healing hours of dragging every detail out into the unforgiving open so he could be put back together again. It was literally a life-saving ordeal to go to therapy and going through it all again in his head was the only way to find his center and feel whole after watching a boy who had been just like him be emotionally ripped apart.

After an hour or so of the accustomed mental review Eric was breathing normally and had cleared his head as much as possible. Knowing the agents would form a search grid if he did not show himself soon; he got up and headed back to Ops.

As he climbed the stairs to the Operation's Center computer room, he realized that Nell had probably seen the whole thing through the video link-up in the boatshed, no doubt curious to witness his 'interrogation debut'. _Shit_.

As he sat in his favorite red swivel chair beside Nell, she thankfully made no sign that she knew he was there. It was like he had never rushed downstairs to see Hetty, never gone to the boatshed. Eric was too grateful for her unspoken acceptance he was unable to find words; he simply looked at her as she typed away and began to do the same.

After a fashion, Nell said out of the blue, "I tell my Mom about this place all the time. When I have a bad day, you know. I write her letters."

Eric turned to her, stunned at the breach in security that they worked so hard to maintain and that the work of their agency and their very lives relied on every day.

"But, Nell, that's really really not good. You can't write your Mom letters, what are you thinking?"

"I never _send_ them."

"Fine but if somebody were to install a keystroke memory program on your computer they could-"

Nell interrupted, "I _write_ letters, I don't type them. Obviously I know better to keep them around. I burned them in the kitchen sink the second I'm through writing. Pen to paper, Beale. It's cathartic to get it all out sometimes and say what you want to say but can't. Even if you don't send it, you still tell it."

Eric smiled at his partner, amazed again at her brilliance. He knew exactly what she meant and what she was telling him he could do for some relief. Finding no words to express his true level of gratitude for her uncanny ability to make so much sense in so few words, Eric simply said, "I will try to remember that."

"Good."

A few hours later, at home in his apartment, Eric sat on his loveseat and stared at the wall in front of him. His eye caught a photo of his family, taken by a neighbor in his family's backyard when he and his brothers were still children, before Eric even knew the name of the man who would one day push him to the brink. Eric got up suddenly and foraged through the cabinet on the bottom third of his bookcase, emerging with an aged spiral-bound notebook from his college years. He quickly found a pen in his work bag.

"_Dear Mom and Dad…"_


End file.
